infrastructure. He also said the budget even with its inadequacies, concentrated larger funds on recurrent expenditure and less on capital projects.He stated these when he spoke at a forum organised by the Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility (NIAF) at the headquarters of Adam Smith International in London, the United Kingdom.The minister however gave assurances that the government of Buhari knew what was wrong and how to solve it. He noted that the government has designed proper solutions which include fiscal stimulus and capital spending to reposition the economy of the country and get it out of recession.He said for three years contractors in his ministry were owed monies for jobs given to them, adding that these were seeds of recession planted and nurtured by the government that ran the affairs of Nigeria between 2013 and 2014.“Today, we face challenging economic times. The commodities boom is gone. We have suffered consecutive negative growth and are economically experiencing a recession.“The reason is simple. It is not what the Buhari administration has done, it is a result of the profligate fiscal policy between 2010 and 2015, when we not only under-budgeted (N4 trillion) in the face of deficient infrastructure, we also compounded it by providing 15 per cent for capital expenditure, which was under-funded and 85 per cent for recurrent, which we adequately funded,” said Fashola.He said if the country had made good choices with its past fiscal policy, especially expanding her infrastructure base, it perhaps would not have gotten into economic recession.According to him: “If infrastructure drives growth as we have experienced from the great depression to the Marshall plan, and lately fiscal stimulus in recent years, our current economic recession is the result of yesterday’s policies and choices especially during 2010- 2015.“Sometime in March 2015, a little over a year ago, before the Buhari government, a snap survey of four construction companies which I constructed revealed that they had laid off 5,150 workers because government was not paying these construction companies for work done.“Since my assumption of office, in the ministry of power, works and housing, meetings with contractors in power, works and housing reveal that contractors have been owed 2 to 3 years. These are the seeds of recession, planted and nurtured between 2013 and 2014.“The Buhari government knows the cause, and has designed the proper solution: fiscal stimulus and capital spending,” he added. The minister stated that the country will recover from the recession and Buhari’s government will deliver new infrastructure and upgrade aging ones. He equally explained that the government’s budget has increased from an average of N4 trillion to an ambitious N6 trillion with a 30 per cent allocation to capital expenditure.Fashola said the budget has since its passage also responded to the needs of the country with 70 construction companies who are owed monies getting paid N63.169 billion for quarter one (Q1) in the works sector alone.“The response is that in the last few weeks since budget was passed, construction companies that had demobilised from their sites and laid off workers due to lack of payment since 2014, are re-mobilising to rail, road, power and other construction sites, and re-calling workers.“These are the first signs of productivity; they signal a clear pathway out of recession, and although results take time to manifest, Nigeria has chosen an appropriate pathway out of economic difficulty,” he added.He urged Britain to consider renewing and upgrading its business partnership with Nigeria in the aftermath of its decision to exit the European Union. According to him, Nigeria offered it an opportunity with its huge market and evolution from a colony to a sovereign country.
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